What's Special?
by SkaterKid13
Summary: Special people are never very far away. Some are together under the same roof. Oneshot. Happy Belated Mother's Day!


**Happy Belated Mother's Day!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Hey Arnold, but I do own Phillip, Stella and Miles. **

**What's Special?**

_'The nerve of that girl. How DARE she call her that! She called her a BABOON, for cripes' sake. The stupidest, ugliest, smelliest ape of them all!' _

Stella's pet fish, Reef, had past away a few days ago and she's been broken up about it ever since. Arnold treid talking to her, but every time he brought the name up, she just broke down. And who came along and made it worse? Helga. She had said the wrong thing and it cost her the price of being called the wrong name. Helga could still hear those awful words a child could ever say to their parents.

_The Shortman family were all eating dinner when the unexpected happened. "You're nothing but a baboon!" The three-year-old shouted, pointing a finger to her mother._

_"Me?" Helga placed a hand on her heart, denying this wasn't her daughter who was saying that to her._

_"Yes, you! Baboon, baboon, baboon, baboon!" She yelled over and over, stomping._

_"I don't think you realize what you're saying." Helga's heart broke._

_"**BABOOON**!" Stella shouted as loud as she could before burying her face in her hands and storming upstairs to her room. Arnold, Phillip, Miles, Helga and even Abner had eyes the size of their dinner plates. The oldest, five-year-old Phil, broke the silence. "Wow, somebody had to say it. I just can't believe it was **her**." _

Which brings us back to date.

Arnold left the table, disappointed in his wife for not understanding Stella's pain. He tucked his youngest son, Miles into his baby crib and shut off the light before going back downstairs to talk some sense into that wife of his.

After talking over it with Arnold, Helga knew it was time for one of those mother-daughter talks. She was never good at that sort of thing, but she would do anything to get her little girl back.

Helga climbed upstairs and stood in front of her daughter's room, stretching the collar of her shirt, nervously. That's when she found a sign on her door that _really_ made her feel welcomed. "_**Go Away**_." Helga read out loud to herself, grumbling. She opened the door anyway and saw her daughter crying in front of her little pink mirror, her face invisible for Helga to make out.

She cautiously walked over to her and peered over Stella. "Stella, honey, don't hold anything back. You can tell me. Are you crying because you called Mommy a baboon?" She asked, hoping she wasn't still upset with her.

"No!" Stella shot her head up, her green eyes burning red and filled with tears.

Helga snapped her fingers in defeat and scowled. "Nuts..." She whispered.

The twenty-four and a half-year-old squatted down on the roof of Stella's dollhouse, only to feel it crushing underneath her weight. "Doh!" Helga quickly rose from the broken dollhouse and found pieces stuck to her butt. "This isn't going well at all." She groaned, brushing off the broken shards.

Stella wiped some of her tears away and finally faced her mother. "Look, if you just want me to fowgive you..." She started before Helga cut her off.

"No, no, no... it's just... I just wish I knew what to say." Helga said, standing by the bookshelf and lifting up the lid of a music box that she had bought for her baby girl. Inside, there was a little ballerina in a pink tutu that spun in a circle and out came a song that played a cute lullabye melody.

"So maybe this music will help." Helga smiled, walking back over to Stella. "Now, you lost someone special and it hurt. I'm lucky because I never lost anyone special to me. Everyone special to me is under this roof." Helga put her hands on her daughter's shoulders.

"Ohh," Stella moaned, sadly, still not understanding.

"It's true." Helga reassured her, facing out the window. "Oh, you'll have lots of special people in _your_ life, Stella. There's probably somewhere special where they all get together and the food is real good and people like me are serving drinks."

She could go on and on, explaining to her daughter that the one special person you cared about is never far away, but stopped, thinking it was another talk for another time.

Helga sighed, turning back around to face Stella. "Look, maybe I can't explain all this, but I can fix your dollhouse for you." She offered. "At least, I'm good at _monkey_ work." She hinted.

She knelt down next to Stella and smiled. "You know, _monkey_? You know what I mean?" Helga asked, cheekily and gently elbowing her daughter.

"Yeah..." Stella said softly. She couldn't help but smile. To her, her mother's jokes were the best.

"I could hold these nails in place with my tail." Helga chuckled, causing contagious laughter to have an effect on Stella. "Hoot, hoot, hoot, hoot, hoot." Helga started whooping and chattering, imitating a monkey by pretending to groom Stella's hair.

"You're siwwy." Stella giggled at her mother.

She threw on her best monkey impression. "Gimme a banana."

Stella laughed. "I don't have any bananamas." She attempted to pronounce.

Helga picked her up, tickling up. "Come on, you're holdin' out on me." She demanded playfully, not ceasing to tickle Stella. She loved hearing laughter, especially if it was her daughter's.

The two finally caught their breath from laughing and Stella sniffled. "I'm sowwy I called you a baboon, Mommy."

Helga nuzzled her nose against Stella's. "Think nothing of it." She said, hugging her while Stella planted kisses on her cheek.

Meanwhile, Phil was throwing his rubber ball back and forth at the wall and back to his hand over and over. He was upset because he didn't win the election they were having for class president. Phil looked a lot like his father, having inherited his nose, except he had brown, chesnut hair that came from his Great grnadpa Phil's and his mother's eyes, ears, jawline and moodiness.

Helga passed by his room and noticed how sad her son looked. She walked in. "Hey, Phil, what's shakin'?" She asked, looking into her son's greenish-blue eyes.

Phil shook his head. "Oh, Mom... if only more of us had voted..."

"Hey, son, if you were president, would you have gotten more responsibilities?" Helga asked.

"Well, yeah." Phil answered.

"Would you have got to do extra work?"

Phil didn't answer that time, thinking if he had so many things to do for the class, he wouldn't get to focus on other things that were important to him.

"_And _is this Mr. President dude gonna get to do anything neat, like pitch the first game at the World Series?" Helga questioned him, hoping he would catch on.

Phil did. "No," He smiled, suddenly glad he didn't win the position of president.

"So let the baby have his bottle, huh? That's my motto." Helga smiled, ruffling her son's hair and hugging him.

The five-year-old chuckled along with his mother. "Hey, thanks, MonkeyGirl." He chuckled.

Helga walked out fo the door and closed it. "Holy, moly... talk about parenting." She smiled. She passed by her youngest child's room and heard him start to stir in his sleep, whimpering like he was about to cry. "Uh-oh," Helga worried, leaning over the crib.

Miles tossed and turned, his pacifier beside his little body. He was the spitting image of his father. Head and all, except for his mother's eyes and possibly her imagination.

The woman placed the pacifier back inside Miles' mouth and watched him sleep peacefully, a smile appearing on his face. "Sleep well, Miles." Helga whispered, walking out of the baby's room and knowing her work was done. "Ah, three for three."

Arnold was pacing back and forth in the living room, waiting anxiously for Helga to come back down. He saw her out of the corner of his eye and ran toward her. "Helga, did you straighten things out with-?"

Helga cut him off. "Ah, bup, bup, bup, bup... don't say anything, Arnold. Let's just go to bed... I'm on the biggest roll of my life." She said proudly as she wrapped an arm around her husband's shoulder and flicked off the light.

There was a special place where special people got together... the Shortman house.

* * *

**Happy Mother's Day! **

**The End! **

**Peace out! **


End file.
